Ok, here's an excerpt from Pickwick, a fine list poem in itself:
"'Ah! fine place,' said the stranger, 'glorious pile--frowning walls--tottering arches--dark nooks--crumbling staircases--Old cathedral too--earthy smell--pilgrims' feet worn away the old steps--little Saxon doors--confessionals like money-takers' boxes at theatres--queer customers those monks--Popes, and Lord Treasurers, and all sorts of old fellows, with great red faces, and broken noses, turning up every day--buff jerkins too-- matchlocks--Sarcophagus--fine place--old legends too--strange stories: capital' and the stranger continued to soliloquize until they reached the Bull Inn, in the High Street, where the coach stopped."
(Alfred Jingle in Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837)
Yes, it is truly terrifying to consider how he might have harnassed all that energy with modern technology.
|